Van Gogh in Arles
With a major exhibition at the National Gallery, now is the time to visit the city that inspired Van Gogh’s greatest work
Vincent van Gogh is back in Britain, and the streaming services are here to help us welcome him. As a National Gallery show celebrating the Dutch painter’s history-making stay at Arles between 1888 to 1890 attracts rave reviews, Netflix has two shows that reference his time there: the Dutch travelogue Het Schildersleven van Vincent van Gogh (The Painting Life of Vincent van Gogh) and an episode of The Great Painters of the World dedicated to him. Over on MGM+, there’s the 2018 film At Eternity’s Gate, starring Willem Dafoe as the famed painter. And on BBC Sounds, an episode of In Our Time from last year gives a superlative overview of the great artist’s life and art, and hones in on those incendiary two years in Arles
Ear-chopping, mental breakdown and all those incandescent paintings (over 200 in two years) – you can see why the painter’s time in the Provençal city on the edge of the Camargue speaks to film-makers. But does it still speak to visitors? And can we get a sense of the real artist behind the troubled genius of modern legend? The answer is yes, especially so if you go in autumn when the holiday crowds and temperatures have abated, and if you can visit the National Gallery’s once-in-a-lifetime show before you go.
Why not let Van Gogh be your guide? Arrive, as he did, at the railway station in the Cavalerie district just outside the ancient city walls – there are direct trains from Marseilles airport that take 40 minutes. If you turn left out of the station, you’ll come to the broad sweep of the River Rhône and a sign that marks the spot where Van Gogh painted Starry Night. The roundabout behind you used to be public gardens outside the famed Yellow House, which Van Gogh briefly – and calamitously – shared with Paul Gauguin. Here, Vincent completed some of his most famous paintings, including Bedroom in Arles, Van Gogh’s Chair and his second Sunflowers series. Allied bombing in the Second World War destroyed the Yellow House, and the park has largely gone, and yet (Arc de Triomphe excepted) there is no more evocative traffic roundabout in France.
Inside the medieval Port de la Cavalerie gate, much remains as Van Gogh knew it; compact and largely traffic-free, this a wonderful town just to walk around.
Even obvious tourist traps like Place du Forum, the ancient square where Van Gogh painted Café Terrace at Night, still suggest his presence. Likewise, you must visit the 16th-century hospital, situated in an area now called Espace Van Gogh, where he arrived on the morning of 24 December 1888 after mutilating his ear while Gaugin was staying with him. He recovered enough to paint several wonderful paintings in the courtyard, including Garden of the Hospital in Arles, which is at the National Gallery show. It’s easy to imagine Van Gogh looking down from the first-floor balcony where his ward was.
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Wander along the alleyways and, eventually, you will come across the remains of the Roman amphitheatre (where bullfights are still staged) and the theatre. These didn’t interest Van Gogh too much, but the Alyscamps did. This tree-lined medieval necropolis is where he took Gauguin to work outside (“en plein air” as art critics call it). One of the resulting Van Gogh works, Les Alyscamps (also in the National Gallery exhibition), shows industrial chimneys and railway sheds overlooking the ancient scene. Those sheds now house the Luma art centre and are overlooked by Frank Gehry’s 2021 mirror-covered Luma Tower, which, the architect claims, evokes Van Gogh’s Starry Night (you might need to employ your imagination for that one).
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The Drum Café, in the base of Gehry’s tower, is a great place to eat, but pretty much anywhere in town with a Provençal menu and a waiter who can pull a cork will be good – follow your nose through the small streets around the Place de la République and somewhere will be serving an Arles tarte for pudding – a sublime open pastry with apricots and strawberries.
The Place de la République itself is dominated by the strange façade of the fantastical Eglise St Trophime, studded with scores of angels, saints and mythical creatures. Van Gogh disliked this church intensely, calling it “a nightmare”. So perhaps wander down another alley to the Vincent van Gogh Foundation, a gallery in a former bank with a zingy glass-and steel frontage. From the upper terrace, look out over the pantile roofs of the city and you’ll realise that they are not, as Van Gogh painted them in the Yellow House, bright orange blobs of piled-up colour, but an altogether paler red. But Van Gogh didn’t come to Arles to record exactly what he saw, rather to delight in the light and reinvent art. After a pastis or two, you won’t doubt he got it right.
Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers is at London’s National Gallery until January 2025, from £24 (nationalgallery.org.uk). For more info on Arles, see arlestourisme.com
